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Vox
6 days ago
- Politics
- Vox
Why the US just can't quit Middle East wars
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. A view of the famous anti-US mural in central Tehran, Iran, that depicts the US flag with bombs and skulls on April 10. Hossein Beris/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images In April 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized Operation Eagle Claw, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the American hostages held at the US embassy in Iran. Since then, every US president has ordered at least one — usually more than one — military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa. Under Ronald Reagan, there was the bombing of Libya and the deployment of Marines to Lebanon. Under George H.W. Bush, there was Operation Desert Storm. Under Bill Clinton, airstrikes against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and against al-Qaeda in Sudan. Under George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq. Under Barack Obama, a multicountry counterterrorist drone campaign, the toppling of Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime in Libya, and the redeployment of US troops to Iraq to fight ISIS. Under Donald Trump's first term, an expanded campaign against ISIS, missile strikes against the Syrian regime, and the targeted assassination of Iran's most powerful military leaders. Under Joe Biden, the deployment of US troops to the region following the October 7, 2023, attack and the airstrikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels. Now, in his second term, Trump has crossed another Rubicon, becoming the first US president to use military force on the soil of America's longtime adversary, Iran. Though a ceasefire has now been declared, it's very possible this crisis is only beginning, particularly if, as US intelligence agencies reportedly believe, much of Iran's nuclear program is still intact after the strikes. Trump's pivot toward the Middle East is a surprising turn from this president. This is a very different message from the one he delivered in Saudi Arabia just last month when he decried 'neocons' and 'interventionists' for ill-considered attempts to remake the region through force. Trump has said in the past, in reference to the Iraq war, that 'GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY,' and he has generally appeared to view the region — apart from wealthy Gulf States — as a hopeless war zone with little to offer the US. While he was often stymied in his attempts to withdraw troops in his first term by hawkish advisers, this time many of his senior appointees have been so-called 'restrainers,' who advocate pulling back from US military commitments overseas or 'prioritizers,' who want to shift attention to what they see as the more important challenge posed by China. Until very recently, they appeared to have the upper hand. But in the current crisis, the US actually relocated important military assets from the Pacific to the Middle East to the consternation of some Pentagon officials. The stated desire to end 'endless wars' in the Middle East and shift to bigger priorities is something the Trump administration has in common with the other two post-Iraq war presidencies. Barack Obama was elected in large part because of his opposition to the war in Iraq. In 2011, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, promised a 'pivot' to Asia and the Pacific for US foreign policy priorities. The Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS got in the way of that, and the phrase 'pivot to Asia' became a running joke in US foreign policy circles. Joe Biden withdrew US troops from Afghanistan — not a Middle Eastern country but very much the archetypal 'endless war' of the post-9/11 era — and put forward a foreign policy vision emphasizing great power competition with China. His national security adviser infamously described the Middle East as 'quieter than it has been in decades' just days before the October 7 attacks shattered that quiet and shifted his boss's priorities. 'Right now, President Trump is having what I call his 'Michael Corleone' moment, and at some point, every president has one,' said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, referring to Al Pacino's famous line in The Godfather III, 'Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.' But why does this dynamic keep repeating? Why, 45 years after Operation Eagle Claw and 22 after the invasion of Iraq, can't the US military 'get out' of this region? The Middle East is still important…and still has a lot of problems One big reason why the US keeps getting drawn into the Middle East's crises is that those crises keep happening. 'The Middle East is an area of enduring national security interest of the United States, and it's far from stable,' said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'And as a result, we're going to keep getting dragged in until it reaches something resembling stability.' Why is it an important interest? The simple answer is economics. The Middle East contains two of the global economy's most important chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global oil flows, and the Red Sea, through which 12 percent of global trade flowed until shipping was disrupted by Houthi attacks. The 'no blood for oil' slogans of Iraq War protesters were an oversimplification, but it's undoubtedly true that keeping the region's oil and gas flowing to the world has been a US priority since Franklin Roosevelt met with the king of Saudi Arabia aboard a cruiser on the Suez Canal in 1945, kicking off the modern US-Saudi relationship. In the 1970s, the principle that the US would use military force to prevent any country from a hostile takeover of the Gulf region, and its vast energy supplies, was enshrined as the 'Carter Doctrine.' Today, thanks to domestic production, the US is much less directly dependent on Middle Eastern oil than it used to be, but disruptions in the region can cause global energy prices to spike. Beyond economics, events ranging from the 9/11 attacks to the Syrian refugee crisis have illustrated that the Middle East's regional politics don't always stay regional. America's unique relationship with Israel is another reason why the US is continually involved in regional crises. For decades, the US has supported Israel and attempted, with mixed success, to help mediate its relationships with its neighbors and with the Palestinian territories. But the US military actually actively participating in Israel's wars rather than just sending weapons — as happened to some extent under Biden and now much more explicitly under Trump — is a fairly new dynamic. America is still the region's preeminent outside power Ever since the 1960s, when Britain withdrew many of its 'East of Suez' troop deployments, America has been the preeminent military power in the region. That remains true despite growing concern in Washington about China or Russia's influence. When crises do erupt, the US, with more than 40,000 troops in bases throughout the region and close security and political partnerships with key powers in the region, is often the outside power best positionedto intervene. When the Houthis began attacking shipping traveling through the Red Sea, there was little question of what country would lead the operation to combat them, much to the irritation of America Firsters like Vice President JD Vance. Michael Wahid Hanna, director of the US program at Crisis Group, says another reason the US often feels compelled to intervene in Middle East crises is that it 'had a major role in fomenting' something. He pointed to what he called the 'two great sins of the post-Cold War era for the United States,' the failure to secure a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the 1990s, when the US enjoyed far more leverage than it does today, and the invasion of Iraq. Both continue to drive instability in the region today. As Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous 'Pottery Barn rule' warned in the run-up to the war in Iraq, 'if you break it, you own it.' What if we're the problem? Advocates of US engagement in the Middle East argue that if we pull back, it will create power vacuums that will be filled by malign actors. Obama felt compelled to redeploy US troops to Iraq just three years after withdrawing them when the country's military collapsed in the face of ISIS. But advocates of foreign policy restraint argue that the US isn't doomed to keep intervening, and that its presence isn't actually helping. Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes that US security partnerships can actually embolden governments in the Middle East to escalate crises, knowing that they can count on US support to deal with the consequences. The most recent illustration is Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to attack Iran, made under the correct assumption that he would have backup from the Trump administration. 'What we have is a delusion in which we think that we can continue to maintain close security partnerships with states in the Middle East, station hundreds of thousands of US service members around the region indefinitely, and that somehow the next bombing will restore deterrence, and we'll get to peace and stability,' he said. 'That hasn't worked for my whole lifetime. Taking the long view Whether you think America is uniquely positioned to provide stability or that it's the cause of the instability, voters should probably treat promises of pivots away from the Middle East with skepticism. Promising to bring American troops home is always going to be a political winner. And whether it's a rising China or America's own borders, one thing there's agreement on across the political spectrum is that America's core security interests are not in the Middle East. That's especially true as the country's post-9/11 focus on terrorism has faded. But, says Michael Rubin, senior fellow and Mideast specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, 'Most Americans understand history through the lens of four-year increments. We believe each administration starts with a tabula rasa.' Administrations are often optimistic that one military campaign (such as Israel's recent decimation of Iran's Axis of Resistance) or one grand bargain (such as the Biden administration's attempts to reach a Saudi-Israel normalization deal that would also revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process) will resolve the region's issues enough that America can move on to other things. The region's leaders, many of whom have been in power for decades, often take a longer view. More likely is that the regional crises, some of which we've played a role in creating, will be occupying America's attention for administrations to come.
Vox
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
This time, it's Trump's war
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. US President Donald Trump addresses the nation, alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, from the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2025. Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign for president that America had fought 'no wars' during his first presidency, and that he was the first president in 72 years who could say that. This was not, strictly speaking, true. In his first term, Trump intensified the air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, ordered airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime in response to chemical weapons use, and escalated a little-noticed counterinsurgency campaign in Somalia. But in those cases, Trump could say, with some justification, that he was just dealing with festering crises he had inherited from Barack Obama. Likewise, the president has repeatedly claimed that the wars in Gaza and Ukraine never would have happened had he been president when they broke out, rather than Joe Biden. That's a counterfactual that is impossible to prove, and he may have been overly optimistic in his promises to quickly negotiate an end to both those conflicts, but it's fair to say that both are wars Trump inherited rather than chose. This time, it's different. This time, it's Trump's war. On Saturday night, the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, ending weeks of speculation about whether the US military would join the Israeli war on Iran that began more than a week ago. The past few days in Washington have felt a bit like the battles over intelligence in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, but run in fast-forward. Rather than pressuring intelligence agencies to justify his preferred course of action, Trump has simply overruled them. Rather than building a case before Congress and the UN for the need to act, he's simply ignored them. Trump argued that Iran brought the attack on themselves by not taking the deal he was offering — but negotiations were ongoing at the time Trump abandoned the diplomatic path. Trump endorsed the Israeli assessment that war was necessary because new information showed Iran was 'very close to having a weapon.' But this contradicts the very recent statements from his own intelligence agencies and director of national intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, officials in these agencies were not convinced by Israel's new evidence that something dramatic had changed in Iran's nuclear program. It also contradicts Trump's own statements from earlier this month when he publicly discouraged Israel from attacking Iran, saying it would derail his efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal. It's hard to overstate just how fast the Trump administration's policy has shifted. Just a month ago, Trump appeared to be giving Netanyahu's government the cold shoulder, pursuing direct diplomacy with Israel's staunchest enemies – including Iran – and cozying up to governments in the Gulf that plainly had no appetite for a new war. Now Trump has not only endorsed Netanyahu's war; he has joined it, and boasted in his brief statement from the White House on Saturday that the two had worked as a team like 'perhaps no team has ever worked before.' He ended his speech with 'God bless Israel' along with 'God bless America.' Tonight was also a major blow to those on the right, as well as some on the left, who hoped that the Trump administration would usher in either a new era of military restraint or a shift in priorities away from the Middle East toward China. (The US has now relocated military assets from Asia for this war.) There's still a lot we still don't know, but it's fair at this point to say that this is a war of Trump's choosing. Trump's extraordinary gamble In his statement from the White House on Saturday night, Trump said that the operation had been a 'spectacular military success' and that the enrichment facilities had been 'totally obliterated.' For the moment, we don't have corroborating evidence of that. Israel had mostly avoided striking these sites itself. Only the US has the powerful GBU-57 'bunker buster' bombs that can destroy Iran's most security nuclear sites, particularly the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, and only the US has the aircraft that can carry them. US officials told the New York Times that US bombers dropped a dozen bunker busters on Fordow on Saturday. Many experts believe the facility would be difficult to destroy and require multiple strikes, even with those bombs. Doubts about whether Fordow could be destroyed were reportedly one reason why Trump hesitated in ordering these strikes. In his statement, Trump also implied that this was a one-off operation for now. Speaking of the pilots who dropped the bombs, Trump said, 'hopefully we will no longer need their services at this capacity' but also threatened that if Iran did not 'make peace' then 'future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' He added: 'There are many targets left.' The hope appears to be that Iran will now be forced to cut a deal to entirely give up its nuclear program. But an Iranian regime mindful of its own legitimacy is also likely to retaliate in some form, possibly by targeting some of the roughly 40,000 US troops deployed around the Middle East. The hope may be that these will be limited tit-for-tat strikes like those that followed the US assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020, though subsequent assessments have found that those attacks did more damage than was initially thought and could easily have killed far more US troops. In any event, the Iranian regime is far more desperate now, and once the missiles start flying, it could get very easy for things to escalate out of control. If Iran has any remaining enrichment infrastructure, either at these sites or hidden elsewhere throughout the country, the country's leaders may now feel far less hesitation about rushing to build a bomb. There was long a view that Iran's leaders preferred to remain a 'threshold nuclear state' — working toward a bomb without actually building one. In this view, they believed that their growing capacity to build a weapon gave them leverage, while not actually trying to build one avoided US and Israeli intervention. That logic is now obsolete. It's also not clear that Israel simply wants nuclear concessions from the Iranian regime. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that new intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities was the reason for starting this war, it's been clear both from the Israeli government's rhetoric and choice of targets that this is a war against the Islamic Republic itself, and that regime change may be the ultimate goal. Trump didn't mention regime change in his statement, but he has now committed American military power to that Israeli war. So far, this war has been characterized by stunning Israeli tactical successes, as well as the seeming impotence of Iran and its once vaunted network of regional proxies in its response. (Though it's unclear how long Israel's air defense system can keep up if Iranian strikes continue at this pace.) This may have emboldened a president who has backed off of actions like this in the past, convincing him that striking Iran's nuclear program now would be effective and that the blowback would be manageable.
Vox
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
This time it's Trump's war
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. US President Donald Trump addresses the nation, alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, from the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2025. Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign for president that America had fought 'no wars' during his first presidency, and that he was the first president in 72 years who could say that. This was not, strictly speaking, true. In his first term, Trump intensified the air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, ordered airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime in response to chemical weapons use, and escalated a little-noticed counterinsurgency campaign in Somalia. But in those cases, Trump could say, with some justification, that he was just dealing with festering crises he had inherited from Barack Obama. Likewise, the president has repeatedly claimed that the wars in Gaza and Ukraine never would have happened had he been president when they broke out, rather than Joe Biden. That's a counterfactual that is impossible to prove, and he may have been overly optimistic in his promises to quickly negotiate an end to both those conflicts, but it's fair to say that both are wars Trump inherited rather than chose. This time, it's different. This time, it's Trump's war. On Saturday night, the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, ending weeks of speculation about whether the US military would join the Israeli war on Iran that began more than a week ago. The past few days in Washington have felt a bit like the battles over intelligence in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, but run in fast-forward. Rather than pressuring intelligence agencies to justify his preferred course of action, Trump has simply overruled them. Rather than building a case before Congress and the UN for the need to act, he's simply ignored them. Trump argued that Iran brought the attack on themselves by not taking the deal he was offering — but negotiations were ongoing at the time Trump abandoned the diplomatic path. Trump endorsed the Israeli assessment that war was necessary because new information showed Iran was 'very close to having a weapon.' But this contradicts the very recent statements from his own intelligence agencies and director of national intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, officials in these agencies were not convinced by Israel's new evidence that something dramatic had changed in Iran's nuclear program. It also contradicts Trump's own statements from earlier this month when he publicly discouraged Israel from attacking Iran, saying it would derail his efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal. It's hard to overstate just how fast the Trump administration's policy has shifted. Just a month ago, Trump appeared to be giving Netanyahu's government the cold shoulder, pursuing direct diplomacy with Israel's staunchest enemies – including Iran – and cozying up to governments in the Gulf that plainly had no appetite for a new war. Now Trump has not only endorsed Netanyahu's war; he has joined it, and boasted in his brief statement from the White House on Saturday that the two had worked as a team like 'perhaps no team has ever worked before.' He ended his speech with 'God bless Israel' along with 'God bless America.' Tonight was also a major blow to those on the right, as well as some on the left, who hoped that the Trump administration would usher in either a new era of military restraint or a shift in priorities away from the Middle East toward China. (The US has now relocated military assets from Asia for this war.) There's still a lot we still don't know, but it's fair at this point to say that this is a war of Trump's choosing. Trump's extraordinary gamble In his statement from the White House on Saturday night, Trump said that the operation had been a 'spectacular military success' and that the enrichment facilities had been 'totally obliterated.' For the moment, we don't have corroborating evidence of that. Israel had mostly avoided striking these sites itself. Only the US has the powerful GBU-57 'bunker buster' bombs that can destroy Iran's most security nuclear sites, particularly the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, and only the US has the aircraft that can carry them. US officials told the New York Times that US bombers dropped a dozen bunker busters on Fordow on Saturday. Many experts believe the facility would be difficult to destroy and require multiple strikes, even with those bombs. Doubts about whether Fordow could be destroyed were reportedly one reason why Trump hesitated in ordering these strikes. In his statement, Trump also implied that this was a one-off operation for now. Speaking of the pilots who dropped the bombs, Trump said, 'hopefully we will no longer need their services at this capacity' but also threatened that if Iran did not 'make peace' then 'future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' He added: 'There are many targets left.' The hope appears to be that Iran will now be forced to cut a deal to entirely give up its nuclear program. But an Iranian regime mindful of its own legitimacy is also likely to retaliate in some form, possibly by targeting some of the roughly 40,000 US troops deployed around the Middle East. The hope may be that these will be limited tit-for-tat strikes like those that followed the US assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020, though subsequent assessments have found that those attacks did more damage than was initially thought and could easily have killed far more US troops. In any event, the Iranian regime is far more desperate now, and once the missiles start flying, it could get very easy for things to escalate out of control. If Iran has any remaining enrichment infrastructure, either at these sites or hidden elsewhere throughout the country, the country's leaders may now feel far less hesitation about rushing to build a bomb. There was long a view that Iran's leaders preferred to remain a 'threshold nuclear state' — working toward a bomb without actually building one. In this view, they believed that their growing capacity to build a weapon gave them leverage, while not actually trying to build one avoided US and Israeli intervention. That logic is now obsolete. It's also not clear that Israel simply wants nuclear concessions from the Iranian regime. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that new intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities was the reason for starting this war, it's been clear both from the Israeli government's rhetoric and choice of targets that this is a war against the Islamic Republic itself, and that regime change may be the ultimate goal. Trump didn't mention regime change in his statement, but he has now committed American military power to that Israeli war. So far, this war has been characterized by stunning Israeli tactical successes, as well as the seeming impotence of Iran and its once vaunted network of regional proxies in its response. (Though it's unclear how long Israel's air defense system can keep up if Iranian strikes continue at this pace.) This may have emboldened a president who has backed off of actions like this in the past, convincing him that striking Iran's nuclear program now would be effective and that the blowback would be manageable.
Vox
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Is Israel trying to destroy Iran's nukes — or topple its government?
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Smoke rises from locations targeted in Tehran amid the third day of Israel's waves of strikes against Iran, on June 15, 2025. Zara/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images Iran's state broadcaster, which was bombed mid-broadcast by Israel on Monday, was many things to many people. It was the employer of hundreds of journalists, some of whom were injured in the attack, prompting protests from press freedom organizations. It was also the propaganda arm of a repressive regime, which has broadcast the 'confessions' of hundreds of the regime's opponents over the years, many believed to have been extracted by torture. What it was not is an integral component of Iran's nascent nuclear program. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country had 'no choice' but to launch airstrikes to stop Iran's imminent rush to acquire a nuclear bomb. But it has also been apparent that this was the floor, not the ceiling, of Israel's ambitions. 'From the beginning, it was apparent, based on the targeting and Israeli public messaging, that this had the potential to be something much more than just a counter-proliferation operation,' said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Retired Gen. Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's national security council with close ties to the current government, told reporters on Monday that regime change was not the 'explicit' goal of the Israeli campaign, which is focused on setting back Iran's nuclear and missile programs, but added, 'I cannot hide that this is the implicit goal or dream of hope of the Israeli government.' Could Iran's regime really fall? The Iranian regime has clearly been weakened by sanctions and the damage dealt to its regional proxy network over the past year. It has few allies, the ones it does have aren't doing much to help, and recent nationwide protests show that there is widespread and deep opposition. But that doesn't mean that the regime is about to collapse after four decades in power. So far, there hasn't been much concerted anti-regime protest since the strikes began, not surprising given that thousands are fleeing the capital city, Tehran. Abdullah Mohtadi, the exiled leader of a Kurdish Iranian opposition party, told Vox that the airstrikes had caused 'mixed feelings' for his movement's supporters. While few will mourn the death of senior commanders who had been involved in crackdowns against peaceful protesters, regime opponents are also fearful about the destruction and strife the war could unleash, especially if it continues for a long time. 'War itself is not a good thing, but sometimes it presents a window of opportunity. I hope this will be the case this time,' Mohtadi said. Other Iranian opposition figures have explicitly rejected Netanyahu's calls for an uprising, saying the bombing doesn't help their movement. It's difficult to generalize about public opinion in any country of 90 million people, much less one where speaking out against the government can be dangerous, noted Ellie Geranmayeh, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, but she said there was a risk of Israel's bombing provoking a 'rally around the flag' effect for disaffected Iranians. 'There is very little love from the Iranian population for the ruling elite,' she said. 'But the more they are seeing pictures of hospitals under attack, civilian deaths rising, state infrastructure, like oil, gas, electricity being hit, sooner or later, public opinion will shift.' Does America want another regime change war in the Middle East? Still, if overthrowing the Islamic Republic, not just halting its nuclear program, is Netanyahu's dream, that changes the stakes for the Trump administration given that Israel is fairly explicitly hoping to directly draw the US military into the conflict. Regime change in Iran had been an implicit goal of Trump's first administration, which pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, applied 'maximum pressure sections,' and authorized the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful figure in the regime. But until just a few days ago, it appeared that the new Trump administration was different. Hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were gone, replaced by America Firsters who argued the US should either be more restrained in using military force abroad, or that it should shift its focus from high-risk, low-reward engagements in the Middle East to the more important superpower conflict with China. The Republican Party, it appeared, had turned the page from the George W. Bush era. In a speech in Saudi Arabia in May, Trump condemned the 'neo-cons' and 'nation builders' who he said had 'wrecked far more nations than they built…intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.' This Trump administration was perfectly willing to go behind Israel's back to cut deals with Iranian-backed proxies like the Houthis and Hamas as well as negotiate with Iran itself on a new nuclear agreement. Even after Israel's airstrikes started, and Trump belatedly embraced them, he still expressed hope that the Iranians would return to the negotiating table. On Tuesday, however, Trump said he was seeking a 'real end' to the conflict and might give up on diplomacy entirely, hinting vaguely that something 'much bigger' than a ceasefire is in the works. He has called for the Iranian government's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!' and suggested that Khamenei could still be targeted. Now, longtime regime change advocates — like Trump's first-term national security adviser John Bolton and Sen. Lindsey Graham — are coming out of the woodwork and urging the US to join Israel's war, with Graham telling Fox News, 'Wouldn't the world be better off if the ayatollahs went away and were replaced by something better? Wouldn't Iran be better off?' Trump appears to have turned on antiwar supporters like 'kooky Tucker Carlson,' while Vice President JD Vance, who was warned in the past that a war in Iran could spark 'World War III,' issued a long statement saying that the focus should remain on Iran's nuclear program. What might regime change look like? In his tweet, Vance noted that Americans 'are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.' The chaos that followed the US-backed toppling of autocratic governments in Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya looms over this conflict, as do Israel's bloody occupations of southern Lebanon and more recently Gaza. It's not an inspiring track record. Eiland, the retired Israeli general, was more optimistic, suggesting that while Iranians were unlikely to rise up while bombs are falling, the operation could make such an uprising more likely down the road. 'Seventy to 80 percent of the people are not only against the regime, they have a very, very pro-Western approach,' he said. 'So it will be relatively easy for these people to create a real distinguished and successful society again, but only after they manage to get rid of the existing regime.' The hope for Israel may be that regime change would look less like Iraq after 2003 or Libya after 2011 than Syria after last year's overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. Though that hasn't quite ushered in complete peace or democracy, there's been far less instability and bloodshed than many feared following the fall of one of the world's most repressive regimes. On the other hand, that outcome came only after a 13-year war that killed more than half a million people and resulted in one of the world's largest refugee crises and the rise of ISIS. Ali Vaez, Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said a more realistic outcome might look more like either Syria after the initial uprising of 2011, or Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. 'You might have a weakened central government that loses control over some parts of its territory, but the regime itself will be entrenched, and even if it's decaying,' he said. None of these outcomes are foreordained. Trump's stance on the war has shifted on a dime in recent days and could shift again. Trump's restraint-oriented advisers may have lost some influence, but wealthy governments across the Persian Gulf and major oil companies may also be wary about a long war that could put them in the crosshairs. Trump has traditionally been more comfortable with short, overwhelming military actions — like the Soleimani strike, or the strikes against Syria in 2017 — than long, drawn-out wars, which this very well could become. 'It could be years of instability, and by the time he leaves the White House, that war would not be over,' said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. 'All I can tell you is that this regime is hated by its people, but also that the US and Israel don't have a good track record in nation building.'
Vox
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Will the US get drawn into the Israel-Iran war?
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. In announcing Israel's strikes against Iran's military leadership and nuclear program last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case that Israel had 'no choice but to act, and act now' in response to recent advances in Iran's capabilities that put his country at risk of a 'nuclear holocaust.' It's far from clear that the Trump administration shared Netanyahu's sense of urgency. President Donald Trump waved off Israeli plans for a strike in April, amid ongoing efforts to negotiate a new deal over Tehran's nuclear program. Just hours before the attack was launched, Trump still seemed committed to the diplomatic path, saying he would 'rather that [the Israelis] don't go in in order not to ruin it.' One of the biggest questions in the days to come — and perhaps the one with the highest stakes for Israel — is whether Trump will come to embrace the war he publicly opposed. Initially, reporting on the lead-up to the attack suggested that the Trump administration was aware the attack was coming but did little to stop it. The first high-level US response to the strikes, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was relatively noncommittal, stating that the Israelis 'believe this action was necessary' but that the US was 'not involved in strikes against Iran.' On Friday morning, however, Trump seemed more enthusiastic about the strikes, posting that he had warned Iranian leaders of the consequences of making a deal but that they 'couldn't get it done.' He added, 'the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it.' This appears to be a case of Trump associating himself after the fact with what appears to be a remarkably successful military operation. The hope in the Trump administration seems to be that the Israeli operation will force Iran to make concessions at the negotiating table. Trump urged Iranian leaders to take a deal 'BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,' and US officials reportedly still hoped that planned talks in Oman on Sunday will still go ahead. A meeting on Sunday, at least, seems unlikely. Iran has threatened retaliation for the strikes and made clear that it doesn't believe Washington's disavowals of involvement. Netanyahu's government is also clearly hoping for a more active US role. 'The president seems to still hope that his preference for a diplomatic solution can be salvaged,' said Nimrod Novik, a former foreign policy adviser to the Israeli government. 'Few in the political-security establishment here share that hope.' He added: 'From an Israeli vantage point, it seems that the better the operation looks, the more Trump wants to own it.' The question in the days to come is just how long the US will stay on the sidelines. How the American role in the conflict could escalate According to the New York Times, the Israeli attack plan that Trump rejected in April, 'would have required U.S. help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself.' The conventional wisdom has long been that a military strike to destroy or seriously degrade Iran's nuclear enrichment capability would require US involvement: Iran's key enrichment sites are located in fortified facilities deep underground, and destroying them would require heavy bunker-buster bombs. Israel doesn't have those bombs or the heavy bombers required to carry them, but the US does. But that's not the approach Israel took, at least initially. Analysts say Israel does not appear to have struck the most heavily fortified compound at Fordow, or its nuclear site at Isfahan. A third key nuclear enrichment site, Natanz, sustained only light damage. Instead, Israel's strikes targeted Iran's top leadership, including the commander in chief of its military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and prominent nuclear scientists. Several military bases around Tehran were hit, as well as air defense systems. 'This was not a campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities,' said Nicole Grajewski, an expert on the Iranian nuclear program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'This was a campaign against Iranian command and control and leadership.' This was, however, just the opening salvo of a campaign that Netanyahu said 'will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.' The operation's aims could very well expand. 'This is day one,' noted Raphael Cohen, a military analyst at the RAND Corporation. 'On day 20, day 40, day 60, once everything drags on as stockpiles dwindle, that's when we're going to start to see to what extent Israel needs the United States.' How will Iran respond? Iran fired at least 100 drones at Israel on Friday, which, so far, appear to have been intercepted without causing any damage. Notably, it has not yet fired ballistic missiles, its most potent long-range threat. The Iranian leadership is likely still reeling from the losses it sustained. Its capacity to respond is likely also hampered by Israel's success over the past year and a half against Iran's network of proxies across the Middle East. Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia that was once the most powerful of these proxies, but was decimated by last year's pager bombings, has been notably quiet so far, in contrast to the wide-ranging rocket barrage it launched immediately after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Iran fired missile barrages at Israel twice last year, first in April in response to the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and a second, much larger barrage in October in response to the killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran. Neither caused extensive damage, though in the October strikes, Israeli air defenses were overwhelmed in some places, suggesting that a larger strike could cause serious damage. Iran may have as many as 2,000 ballistic missiles at its disposal, and Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly warned senators last week that Iranian retaliation could cause a 'mass casualty event.' 'In October, you saw more advanced ballistic missiles being used, but not like the full suite of Iranian ballistic missiles,' Grajewski told Vox. She also noted that during both strikes last year, Israel needed international support to successfully repel those attacks, notably help from the US military in shooting down missiles as well as intelligence support from a previously unlikely alliance of Arab countries sharing intelligence. Though the Trump administration was perfectly willing to cut a quick deal with Yemen's Houthi rebels, despite the group continuing to periodically launch missiles and drones at Israel, a massive attack of the type Witkoff warned is a different story. Israeli policymakers are likely counting on the Trump administration to assist in mounting the kind of multilayered defense that the US did under Joe Biden last year. Could Iran attack Americans? Iranian leaders are plainly not buying US disavowals of involvement in Israel's operation. Military commanders had warned that US forces in the Middle East could be exposed to attack in retaliation for such a strike. In the days leading up to the attack, the US partially evacuated its embassy in Baghdad and authorized the departure of personnel and families from other sites in the region due to that risk. Iran has generally been very wary about taking steps that could draw the US into a direct conflict, preferring to act through proxies. This would suggest a direct strike on US facilities or a drastic move likely blocking the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which could cause a spike in global energy prices, is unlikely. Attacks by one of Iran's proxy militias in Iran, or a resumption of strikes against US ships by the Houthis, seem somewhat more likely. On the other hand, we may simply be in uncharted waters where the previous rules of restraint don't apply. The Iranian government will almost certainly feel it has to mount some significant response, if only for its own credibility. There have already been some reports of civilian casualties–if those increase, the need to respond will only grow. For Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 'there's a personal element,' said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. 'How do you get yourself out of the situation without being entirely humiliated? … Is he going to do what Qaddafi did and give up his nuclear program, or is he going to say, you know, what, to hell with it, I'd rather die. I'd rather seek martyrdom. It remains to be seen.' How much has Trump changed? Khamenei isn't the only leader whose motives are something of a mystery at the moment. During his first term, Trump authorized the strike that killed senior Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, a major provocation, but also called off a planned strike on Iranian soil due to concerns about escalation. During his second term, he has been surprisingly unconcerned about coordinating with Israel — cutting deals with the Houthis as well as launching nuclear talks with Iran that Netanyahu was highly skeptical of from the start. His administration this time includes some notably less hawkish voices when it comes to Iran, such as Vice President JD Vance, who has warned against letting Israel drag the US into a war, and described it as a scenario that could 'balloon into World War III.' In 24 hours, Trump has gone from publicly opposing an Israeli strike to taking at least partial credit for it. Netanyahu, who has been advocating an operation like this for years, is likely hoping that continued military success will prompt Trump to abandon his hopes of a big, beautiful deal and join the fight.
